Living in Brisbane, we are lucky enough to camp almost year round (as long as we have a fire to keep us warm in the winter months!). Most often we drive a few hours from the city and set up for a good 2-3 days where there are no shops & no phone reception. This means having plenty of food and a decent esky to keep your beers cold.

We love it when someone knows how to pack an esky well. Starting by standing the beers (or whatever your cold beverage of choice is) up in the esky all in lines. Throwing the first bag of ice on the ground to smash it up and ceremoniously pouring it over the beers. As small bits of ice fall down the sides in between you hear the sound of ice on glass… it was a good pour. Then you stand back and admire the rows of shiny little caps sticking out through the ice. Close the lid and don’t open it til we’ve arrived and set up camp – that’s the rules.

You arrive after sitting in the car for a few hours. You haven’t warmed up or stretched and you are about to basically incorrectly deadlift a 50kg+ esky out of your car and put it onto the ground. At this point, you are putting yourself at risk of a back injury.

– This is a 120L esky weighing 14kg

– 65 bottled beers = ~32kg

– Throw in 2bags of ice = 10kg

– And that all adds up to ~56kg!

“Lifting an esky is a completely different ball game to doing a deadlift” says Australian Powerlifter Col Webb (see previous Blog post). “Lifting a 50kg esky hurts my back more than a 250kg+ deadlift at the gym. It’s the weight out in front of you rather than a nice close bar straight underneath you”

So when you arrive our first recommendation is to get a mate to help you lift the esky out of the back of the ute . But if this isn’t possible, we would suggest you do the following 1 minute warm up:

– Back bends – bend forward/backwards & sideways 3 times each

– Do 5-10 body weight squats

– Do 5-10 push ups

– And decide where you are going to put the esky before you lift it up!